Little Lioness
by pollywaffle
Summary: And isn't love always what it comes down to? With this story certainly, from the very beginning.


_A series of events recently led me to discovering this old account, inactive for nearly 13 years, with a couple of adorably dreadful storied still sitting on it from when I was 11 years old and last delved into fanfiction. Needless to say the temptation to leave well enough alone was too great. I mean, the feeling of knowing that I had username that didn't require 8 numbers at the end of it to be original was almost enough on its own!_

_It's been a while, and I'm a pretty rusty, but I have a few ideas floating around yet and I'm hoping to make this story pretty epic. This chapter is quite short, but I needed to get something up in order to kickstart the journey :)_

_This story is about the lovely Lily Evans: her school days, the beginnings of the great war, her place in the magical world, the men in her life. Ultimately it is a Lily/James romance but we all know that there's few hurdles that both parties need to get over before they can get there_

_Enjoy!_

**Little Lioness**

Before you set out to tell a story you must first have a firm premise and a solid ending. The hardest part about this story is that we all know how it ends.

But, it is not enough to understand that end in isolation from the moments and the days and years that brought them to that final point, and so it goes that the story must be told.

Maybe it was in their youth that lay their extraordinary ability. For who else but a child – and they were children, really- can possess the uncanny ability to make their world so black and white, to align good and bad with absolute conviction, to love unconditionally and wholly, and without motive or reason.

And isn't love always what it comes down to? With this story certainly, and from the very beginning.

**The (nearly) very beginning **

In 1971 the last evening of summer was warm and still. Lily Evans had perched herself atop the wooden fence that marked the end of her garden, right near the intersection of palings where the four properties met. Severus stood beside her, in his own family's garden, picking at the splintering wood, his eyes downcast.

His young heart was heavy, though at 11 years old he did not quite possess the wherewithal or inclination to identify the cause of his unease. He had navigated his messy and rather narrow understanding of love over the summer and supposed that he could contribute at least a part of his melancholy to the fact that he was quite clearly _in love,_ but he sought no further explanation than that. He felt a mild breeze brush against his bare for arms and sighed.

'Oh – Sev! ' He glanced up as Lily broke into his thoughts.

Her face was turned partly away from him down the length of the fence and towards the far corner of her back yard. He could see a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Her freckles managed to somehow take over her nose and her checks during the summer months and with her clear green eyes she looked like a little wood elf, Severus thought. He peered in the direction she was focused and quickly realized that her attention had been drawn to two dancing lights. Fireflys, and very late in the season at that.

'How lovely to see them at this time of year!' Lily breathed. 'Don't you wonder where it is they spend their winters? I cant imagine such lovely things stay around here and wait for the cold.'

She was a million miles away already and he didn't respond. He never really knew how to, when she became all whimsical like this. She was so odd, with her girlish fancies, and he didn't really understand her any more than he understood love, but that didn't change the facts of the matter, that she belonged to him somehow.

Lily tapped the heels of her green gumboots against the fence railing and licked her lips. She felt as though her whole body was humming with secret happiness, as though her young heart was so full it could burst. It was a beautiful evening, warm and lovely, and tomorrow morning, at 9am- but she would think about tomorrow tomorrow, it was too wonderful to even begin to imagine correctly. She scarcely allowed herself to blink for fear that it would all vanish. 11 year old Lily wasn't scared; she was an inquisitive girl, and adventurous, and Sev would be there with her. She turned to her best friend and smiled widely.

Was there ever really an option for a girl like that, with clear, intelligent eyes, and who laughed so freely, to choose anything but the side of the light?

Severus smiled back at her. And there it was again; right there, that unidentifiable sadness. He turned his focus back to the fence paling, on pulling off a shard of old rotted wood. Perhaps it was little more than the knowledge of this being the last day of summer. But more likely, he already understood, just beyond the reach of his 11 year consciousness, that this could be, _would_ be, the last time that things were going to be so simple.

Maybe, terribly, Severus knew even then that there was always someone left behind, on the periphery of every great love story. With his thin and pale face, and his guarded eyes, and his selfish boyish adoration, perhaps he somehow understood.

**In Years To Come **

Lily would look back over those years, when they had been very young, and she could see those inevitable battle lines. Some that, at the time, mattered so much more than they ought to have, and others (mattering so greatly) that were set in place far much earlier than she had every realized.

But hadn't they had been barely teenagers, trying to feel their way through right and wrong, and their own hearts? Aware, always, vaguely, that there was a storm threatening at the edge of their insular worlds, but never anticipating that those battle lines would be thrown in to such sharp relief, and so soon.


End file.
